[bell4321]

I have looked through the water damage sticky thread and cant find someone who's had the same problem.. but basically i split a bit of beer on a mates macbook, and all works fine except keys: a s d f g h j k l

caps lock and the colon key either side of these keys still work, as does every other key on the keyboard. After it happened i did not turn the laptop off, but wiped it down hoping for the best and at first everything worked fine.. until not long later these keys stopped working.

Since, my mate has had his laptop turned off and had the fan blowing at it over night, but before we turn it back on just wanted to know if it will sort itself out or if theres anything we can do to fix it? Not to keen on dismantling the whole laptop to be honest as were not confident we'd be able to fix it or get it back together..

If you have any ideas whats wrong or an estimate as to how much it would cost to be fixed that would be a great help. Its a standard macbook in the aluminium body enclosure if thats any help, i know apple didn't make these for long. I think he got the laptop about december 2008. Thanks

[P]

A keyboard works like a grid - a signal from the vertical lines is led to a horizontal line when a connection is made between by the pushing down of a button. Generally there are two lines next to each other horizontally. What has happened in your case seems to be a break or short circuit between the A and Caps lock key.

If it's a short circuit, you wipe the keyboard trace sheets down with water. If it's a break, you repair with a pencil with conducting ink. In any case, here's how you disassemble, if I understand correctly which model you have. If I made some mistake, search that site for the other guides.

[AKcrab]

The connector for the unibody keyboards to the logic board is a real PITA. It could be that it needs reseated:

[macaddict0001]

Sounds like you got lucky, worst case is a new keyboard. unless the beer got onto anything else and it hasn't manifested itself yet.

[AKcrab]

The keyboard on the unibody is a part of the top case, so the majority of the repair cost is in the labor transferring every old component from the old top case to the new.